so there was this deck of cards, right

[lexicality]

Jessica's house is cute. Lexi could see doing a lot of her homework here, listening to the calming chatter of gossip and getting help from Jessica on math (Bella's no help there) and helping Jessica on English. Forks isn't so bad. She doesn't mind the rain as much as Bella does.

Jessica goes to pee before they even start their assignment, after just introducing Lexi to her mom and dad as "one of Chief Swan's kids", and Lexi doesn't want to do work by herself or she wouldn't have come over in the first place. She sits on the couch and plunks her bag down and waits. There's a random deck of cards over there; she picks it up and flips through it. She's been trying to learn to bridge-shuffle.

Comments

[cardistry]

"You can still fly without the Barrier Jacket, but it's harder," says Brilliance. "With me you kind of get flying for free. ...Uh, not that I'm inviting lectures or anything, but technically my magic can be used for things other than wrecking shit. Yours too. I mean, I'm supposed to be a weapon, not a healing device, but I'm also not supposed to kick the shit out of myself and break my control program, so..."

[incanted]

"Would you be willing to teach me and Lexi how to use our own magic, before you go find a comfortable place to do your nothing in?" Bella asks.

[cardistry]

"I don't really know how to use your magic," he says. "...But I've probably got a better guess than you do. Okay, maybe."

[incanted]

"Also, we'd appreciate a ride home," Bella adds. "...Or back to wherever you put our car. I guess that's Jessica's house."

[cardistry]

"Oh, sure," says Brilliance.

The rotating figure appears on the ground beneath them, and their surroundings blur, and they are back out in front of Jessica's house.

[lexicality]

Lexi sticks her head in the front door. "Hi, Jessica! Um, a thing came up, Bella showed up to get me, sorry I disappeared but I had to talk to her, I gotta go, I'm sorry!" And she grabs her bag and ducks out over Jessica's confused spluttering.

[incanted]

"You wanna drive?" Bella asks.

[lexicality]

"I'll drive," Lexi says, hopping into the relevant seat, "you geek out with magic with your new superweapon."

[cardistry]

Brilliance sighs and tucks himself into Bella's pocket.

[incanted]

Bella has quietly willed herself back into her normal clothes while Lexi was making excuses to Jessica, and does now in fact have pockets; she climbs into the passenger seat. "So - why the profane incantation?" she asks. "Where'd that come from? Where do incantations in general come from?"

[cardistry]

"Spells are named the first time you use 'em," says Brilliance. "And if you don't make an incantation on purpose, it ends up being something you were thinking or saying at the time."

[incanted]

"Did you make that one up today or did you already have an energy blast spell when I found you?"

[cardistry]

"Made it up today," he says. "I've got other energy blast spells, but I didn't use any of 'em."

[incanted]

"Are either me or Lexi in any danger of accidentally casting spells?"

[cardistry]

"Uh... maybe? I don't really know," he says. "Probably not big ones. But if I were you I wouldn't go around wishing really hard for somebody to take a lightning bolt to the face unless you actually wanna throw one."

[incanted]

"But not just by talking; if I decide to curse someone out I'm not going to knock them through a wall with pretty colored lights? It'd be a wished-for result?"

[cardistry]

"Yeah," he agrees. "I can say 'fuck you' until my cards turn white again and nobody's gonna get blasted unless I'm trying for it."

[incanted]

"Okay. So spells happen if magic people want stuff enough - then why haven't we ever cast things before?"

[cardistry]

"Maybe because it's way harder without a device," he says, "I know that's true. Maybe because you didn't want things enough, or didn't want them the right way, or didn't know you could do it."

[incanted]

"What do devices do to make it easier? And is there someplace we can go get them? Ones that don't have other plans, I mean."

[cardistry]

"Not this planet, that's for sure," he says. "I've felt other devices around, but never more than a handful at a time, and I'm pretty sure they were just visiting."

[incanted]

"Okay, so we get to do without at least till we manage to travel between planets. Is that generally pretty doable or are we going to be stuck?"

[cardistry]

"I have no idea," he says. "It's easy for me. But I'm not, you know, hugely keen on meeting anybody who manufactures devices for a living, considering what my manufacturers thought of me."

[incanted]

"Are they all intelligent?"

[cardistry]

"Yes... maybe? Kind of? Depends what you mean by intelligent. I mean, at one end there's me, and at the other end there's what amounts to a baseball bat that takes voice commands."